Happy 1 Year Blogaversary Carrie!

I couldn’t realize how many cool people I would meet through this blog. And when I say “meet” I mean virtually 🙂 One of my fellow cake/cookiers, Carrie, mentioned about a month or so ago that she had been blogging for about a year and that her “blogaversary” was coming up. Having only been blogging since the beginning of the year I can attest this is a very special accomplishment!

I want to congratulate her in proper cake style 🙂 When I saw this cake from My Cake School, I knew instantly it was the one I wanted to make for her.

Happy Birthday/Anniversary Carrie’s Creations!! I know it’s not until April 9th, but I couldn’t wait to say “WAY TO GO!!” I can’t wait to see what creations you have for the 2nd year 🙂

If you haven’t checked out her site before, please stop by…she’s very creative and has some really cute cookies that she’s shown off in various posts 🙂

Fondant Fun

Tonight was the fourth class of the third Wilton cake decorating course. It was all about Gum Paste and Fondant. I had such a good time in the class, but I have to say I was WAY outta my comfort zone!! I don’t think we used a piping bag the entire month. And there wasn’t a single dollop of royal icing. Yowsers! But we made some beautiful flowers. Stuff that looks great…but to be honest doesn’t taste good at all. I know there are people that love to eat fondant, but I’m just not one of them. The flowers may look cleaner made in fondant, but I’ll take a buttercream or royal icing rose any day 😉

I thought I would showcase our final cakes. There were two other people in the class with me and their cakes turned out fantastic! One is a 13 year old girl and she did such a good job. She LOVES color that’s for sure 😉

And here’s my cake…

I’m unfortunately not going to be taking the fourth and final course at this time. Just too busy making cookies. This Wilton ride has been a fun and a wild one. Highly recommend it to anyone who wants to dabble in the arts and get out of the house for some “me” time.

Final Cake Full O’ Flowers

Final class of course 2 in the Wilton Cake Decorating series…COMPLETE!

I was telling the other girl in the class that I enjoyed this course (Flowers and Cake Design) more than the first (Decorating Basics) because we did cooler things, but I missed not bringing something home to eat each week like we did in the first course! hehe  Not that I need it of course and not that my husband and I even eat it, but it was still fun to have a little treat.

Last night I decorated my final cake using the flowers I’d made from the previous classes. I have zero artistic creativity so with some help from the instructor talking through the placement of the flowers I came up with this. Note the last picture is how my husband decided to dig in and eat the cake 🙂

I Spy

I’ve been cooped up this week with a nasty head cold, not to mention my two kiddos were under the weather too. It’s been a rough one. I told my husband he’s lucky he can open the door and walk through the kitchen with how I’ve been feeling. But my energy level is back and I’m ready to bake!

On that note…I spy 2 cakes, milk chocolate mousse filling, 4 sticks of butter and new Americolor color gels. (oh and some chocolate chip cookies my hubby made while I was getting my piggies painted) Oh yeah I’m feeling better! Now, what to do…what to do…

Making a Garden

I have to be honest here (I mean I’m writing on the internet so what else could I possibly be??)…I’m loving making flowers. I wasn’t sure I would since I’m more of a cookie gal, but after the last three cake decorating classes I’m seeing how fun other treats can be. The words that come to mind when I look at these flowers are classy, beautiful, elegant, realistic (ok that’s a stretch I even know it), and maybe most appropriate…royal 😉

Here are the flowers I made last night. Now I just need to decide which ones make the cut and get used for my final cake design next week 🙂 All I gotta say is they better put their game face on before judging!

Lillies

Daffodils

Violets

And of course more roses!

Petal Power

Monday nights…Bachelor and cake decorating class. Oh and a glass of wine, after class of course! I suggest this for anyone who gets the Monday blues…sure makes my Mondays super!

Last night we learned to make flowers using royal icing. Very different than the royal icing I use for cookies. Used the Wilton recipe which, seemed very airy but made pretty flowers. I’m thinking in the future I’ll add some cornstarch to thicken up the icing before piping any flowers. Learned this tip when my roses were having impotence issues 😉

For color inspiration, I used the beautiful flowers a good friend sent me as a thank you for making her baby shower favors. I was going for a light pink and a nice girlie pink but wound up with a purpleish pink and a hot pink. Guess the teacher was right…colors will brighten up when left over night! Need to take this into consideration next time I make up icing!

We learned the Wilton Rose, apple blossoms and the primrose. I’m picturing some of these on my final cake 🙂

Wilton Rose

Primrose

Apple Blossoms

 

Royal Tower

Decided I’d make some cookies today during my babester’s naptime. I have all this royal icing I made for my cake decorating class tonight. I usually always have left over frosting and figured if history repeats itself I’d probably have some left over icing too! Can’t wait to make some beautiful flowers tonight and share them with you…hopefully they turn out!

And…Take FOUR!

Yes…sadly four.

This cake started out to be a practice cake, quickly became built up in my head to be a beautiful cake for tonight’s dessert, and then quickly…and I mean quickly…took a turn and bypassed practice going straight for humorous.

Last night I baked the cake and made a delicious chocolate mousse filling. Even my oldest daughter helped mix up the filling!

     

Folding in the cream

Take 1: And so the morning started…assembled the two layers of cake with the filling and frosted the heck out of it. It was a leaning tower of chocolate cake that no amount of frosting could visually correct. Although, attempting to correct the lean did bring quite a few giggles from the peanut gallery. Quite possibly due to the excessive amounts of frosting on the cake (side note that I hate regular frosting like this so I’ll be scraping it off my piece tonight!) the sides and top never quite dried enough to smooth out. Same problem I had in class the other day so I’m thinking it’s more about the consistency of the frosting than the humidity which is what the instructor blamed it on. Clearly I should be teaching the class 😉

Take 2: I decided to stop fixating on the fact that I have yet another cake without smoothness and move on. Downstairs to be precise. I thumbed through some old Wilton templates that were my Mom’s from the 70’s and found one that I thought would look very nice piped on top of the cake, using a technique I learned in class to transfer the design. The technique calls for tracing the template on a piece of wax paper with decorating gel (bought at the local grocery store), flipping it upside down onto the the top of the cake. Unfortunately, I cut too big of a hole on the gel tube for the template I wanted to use.  “So that’s not going to work.”

Take 3: “Let me try and transfer the design using a toothpick.” I traced the design onto wax paper using a black sharpie. Laid the wax paper onto the top of the cake and followed the black lines with a toothpick. Should have known…if the cake wasn’t dry enough to smooth out with parchment paper, it’s not going to be dry enough to lay wax paper onto either. Needless to say, we had a sticky situation, none of which helped get my design onto the cake.

Take 4: For Christmas my husband bought me a bunch of cake decorating paraphernalia. In my bucket o’ goodies was a pattern press set with some pretty fancy looking presses. So I decided to whip those out and give em a try. I pressed ever so gently and began piping. Using a #2 tip I followed the imprint. HELLO WOBBLY HANDS! Yikes…the lines were not smooth. But at this point my husband and I were making way too much fun of the cake to stop. So I put a “J” and a “P” on the top for his parents who were coming for dinner tonight and slapped on some stars and dots. I do have to say my stars are improving!

Despite it taking four attempts to make this cake in the end it’s a cake that will be devoured in 10 minutes. My husband also said it was frosted better than we used to frost our cakes…so I guess that’s a move in the right direction 🙂

Lessons Learned:

• Make sure you level your top layer of cake enough so that it sits evenly on the bottom layer.
• While the instructor says the frosting used to frost your cake should be a thin consistency, I’d stick with medium so it actually dries sometime during the given century.
• You do not need a 1/2 cup of frosting in each color to do 3 lines and a couple dots